Trish Morrissey

Morrissey, originally from Ireland, lives and works in the UK. After moving from Dublin to London in the 1990s, she briefly worked as a commercial photographer before completing formal studies in photography, graduating in 2001. In 2023, Morrissey's first major UK survey of work at Impressions Gallery, Bradford followed it's very successful run at Serlachius Museum Gustaf, Finland - the exhibition brought together photographs and films spanning more than twenty years of the artist’s career. The exhibition then toured to Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin, running until early 2024. It received a five star review in The Irish Times with their reporter writing, "Trish Morrissey may not yet be a household name, but this new exhibition ...demonstrates why she should be." ‘Autofictions’ was also in The Guardian’s top 10 photographic exhibitions of 2023. 

Morrissey has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally and her work is held in public and private collections including the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Wilson Centre for Photography, London; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, USA; Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, Finland; and the Museum of Applied and Contemporary Arts, Vienna. Morrissey's short film EUPNEA has won a host of awards, including winning the 'Best Artist Film (short)' at the Berlin Indie Film Festival 2024.

Morrissey constructs identity, through photography, film and investigative practices. She approaches a project with a white wall, which she sits with and gradually populates a picture of her intention for a work, like an investigative journalist or detective. To some extent she is compared to the Pictures Generation—a group that also includes Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine. However, the fascination of Morrissey, which sets her apart, is the elevation of the ordinary. She appropriates images from histories that are both her own and borrowed. She fabricates nostalgia with humour and criticism. Morrisey was always interested in experimenting with different identities - she transforms herself, displaying the diversity of her own relatives/family and fabricates characters imagined from historical texts and hearsay. She works in series, improvising on themes of family, motherhood, as well as investigative narratives of historical buildings where she analyses the people that once lived there.